Voice or chatter? Making ICTs work for transformative engagement

What are the conditions in democratic governance that make information and communication technology (ICT)-mediated citizen engagement transformative? While substantial scholarship exists on the role of the Internet and digital technologies in triggering moments of political disruption and cascading upheavals, academic interest in the sort of deep change that transforms institutional cultures of democratic governance, occurring in ‘slow time’, has been relatively muted. This study attempts to fill this gap. It is inspired by the idea of participation in everyday democracy and seeks to explore how ICT-mediated citizen engagement can promote democratic governance and amplify citizen voice. The study involved empirical explorations of citizen engagement initiatives in eight sites – two in Asia (India and Philippines), one in Africa (South Africa), three in South America (Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay) and two in Europe (Netherlands and Spain).DFIDUSAIDSidaOmidyar Networ

Delivery of social welfare entitlements in India : unpacking exclusion, grievance redress, and the role of civil society organisations

The COVID-19 public health crisis and subsequent containment measures followed in India have severely impacted poor and vulnerable populations with respect to food security, livelihood, and access to health services. The national lockdown led to significant distress among citizens due to employment loss, wage cuts, transportation etc., and increased dependency of people on social protection schemes. Although several relief measures have been mobilised by the government, there has been extensive documentation of exclusion of deserving people from availing these social protection measures. In this research project, Gram Vaani, Dvara Research, University of Montreal and Tika Vaani utilised their collective knowledge and field resources to undertake action research specific to the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report explores three research objectives: 1. Analysis of over 20,000 voice reports of grievances submitted on one of Gram Vaani’s Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform to understand the different challenges citizens face in accessing social welfare entitlements. 2. Understanding the various modalities through which Gram Vaani volunteers assist callers in resolving the hindrances they report. 3. Proposing a set of Standardised Operating Procedures (SOPs) that can be used by civil society organisations to reduce exclusion at the last mile

Is Web 2.0 a threat to representative democracy? A deliberation through the Australian carbon tax debate

The influence of social media is intensifying in global societies. As the technologies become cheaper and the acceptance of Web 2.0 becomes widespread, the power of social media on citizens, particularly the integrated influence of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs cannot be underestimated. In this paper, we attempt a deliberation through the lens of carbon tax debate in Australia where the influence of social media has perhaps begun to portend the role of elected representation in this representative democracy

The Techno-Politics of Food Security in New Delhi: The Re-Materialization of the Ration Card

In the early 2000s, millions of households suffered from starvation as waves of drought repeatedly hit the northern states of India. Despite the famine, the Indian authorities remained shockingly unresponsive to the needs of starving populations. In the ensuing decade, a unique configuration of experts, activists, law-makers and lay-persons occupied key spaces and institutions to formulate a right to food law that establishes the biopolitical duties of the statethat is, improving peoples well-beingin the domain of food security. This legislation was enacted in 2013: the National Food Security Act (NFSA). Based on 17 months of fieldwork in Delhi, this dissertation ethnographically explores the productive tension between the ethico-political nature of the NFSA and its rather technical implementation in urban centres. I ask: How do biopolitical interventions, designed to make the state transparent and accountable in the delivery of food entitlements, reconfigure bureaucratic practices and subjectivities? Articulated at the intersection of the analytics of governmentality and an anthropological reading of science and technology studies literature, I scrutinize the re-materialized ration card deployed in the aftermath of the NFSA to render bureaucratic practices transparent. I examine how the ration card mediates governmental attempts of policing relations of patronage, monitoring practices of corruption, and shaping empowered bodies. I argue that while the NFSA was formulated to improve the lives of the Indian population, the distribution of re-materialized ration cards contributed to make the population into a collection of individual bodies empowered to combat chronic hunger on their own. This dissertation probes the gap between what ration cards seek to accomplish, what they do, and the unanticipated effects of these bureaucratic instruments on peoples lives. First, through a reading of Indias policy archive, I document the historic and political trajectory of food policies to contextualize the emergence of right to food discourses in India. Then, I scrutinize how and why notions of governmental accountability and transparency took a predominant place in the formulation of the food security legislation. Finally, I examine how key documents and devices used to implement the NFSA have mediated norms of accountability and transparency in different urban contexts

Hybridising (e)-governance in India : the interplay of politics, technology and culture

This research, based on a neo-institutional model explores how a techno-managerial variety of e-governance reform as espoused by a transnational governance reform agenda affects the level of governance that hinges upon a dynamic relationship between state and society. Since such a research endeavour focuses on the relationship between technology and governance, a social constructivism approach is deployed to explicate how this relationship is mediated through an array of political, social and cultural factors which further calls for a context-specific analysis of e-governance. Consequently, a detailed analysis of e-governance policies and practices in India along with a case study of the Common Services Centres (CSCs) Scheme under the National e-Governance Plan of the Government of India has been undertaken. Such analyses often denotes substantial gap between the macro-policies of reform and their actual impact which is further explained through the analytical category of hybridity. Hybridity shows how both policies and practices go through a process of hybridisation in negotiating the hiatus between ‘imported’ institutional set up and the ‘inherited’ social set up in the post-colonial context of India. Thus, the implication of e-governance in India goes much beyond in explaining (e) governance as a complex interplay between politics, technology and culture. Hence, this research transcends the specific context of India firstly in explicating the relationship between technology and governance and secondly, by devising a unique yet holistic methodological approach to address the entanglement of politics, technology and culture in the complex whole of governance

Alternative Dispute Resolution in India - ADR: status/effectiveness study

This study focuses on the effectiveness of Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanisms in India. The broad targets included (a) a comparative analysis of institutional ADRs and ad-hoc ADR, (b) cost and time benefit analysis of ADRs in comparison with adjudication through courts; (c) study of the effectiveness of pre-trial mediation centres; and (e) to make concrete suggestions. The study proves that ADR in India has not been that effective when compared to adjudication through courts. The report favored institutional ADRs given the high rate of corruption and bureaucratic hitches prevalent in ad-hoc ADRs. The study also found that pre-trial mediation centres were developing in the right track

A Comparative analysis of motivation and job satisfaction level of Employees of different departments in indian Railways (Special reference to Rajkot Division of Western Railway)

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